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No One Is Coming to Save Us

A Novel

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

JJ Ferguson has returned home to Pinewood, North Carolina, to build his dream house and to pursue his high school sweetheart, Ava. But as he reenters his former world, where factories are in decline and the legacy of Jim Crow is still felt, he's startled to find that the people he once knew and loved have changed just as much as he has. Ava is now married and desperate for a baby, though she can't seem to carry one to term. Her husband, Henry, has grown distant, frustrated by the demise of the furniture industry, which has outsourced to China and stripped the area of jobs. Ava's mother, Sylvia, caters to and meddles with the lives of those around her, trying to fill the void left by her absent son. And Don, Sylvia's unworthy but charming husband, just won't stop hanging around.

JJ's return—and his plans to build a huge mansion overlooking Pinewood and woo Ava—not only unsettles their family, but stirs up the entire town. The ostentatious wealth that JJ has attained forces everyone to consider the cards they've been dealt, what more they want and deserve, and how they might go about getting it. Can they reorient their lives to align with their wishes rather than their current realities? Or are they all already resigned to the rhythms of the particular lives they lead?

No One Is Coming to Save Us is a revelatory debut from an insightful voice: with echoes of The Great Gatsby it is an arresting and powerful novel about an extended African American family and their colliding visions of the American Dream. In evocative prose, Stephanie Powell Watts has crafted a full and stunning portrait that combines a universally resonant story with an intimate glimpse into the hearts of one family.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 20, 2017
      In her patient yet rich first novel, a Great Gatsby reboot, Watts (We Are Taking Only What We Need) digs deep into the wounds of a down-and-out African-American family in the contemporary South. Lone wolf J.J. Ferguson returns to economically depressed Pinewood, N.C., after 15 years to woo Ava, his high school crush, and build a hilltop mansion for all to envy. But the reunion is not what he bargained for. Ava, now married to Henry, a handsome but chronically miserable man with another family on the side, is a bored bank teller, at her wits’ end trying to get pregnant after three miscarriages (and searching for solace on mommies2b.com). Meanwhile Ava’s mother, Sylvia, is overweight, tired of being married to a perennial cheater, and filling the void by taking weekly phone calls from a 25-year-old prisoner she’s never met who reminds her of her son. The book takes a beat too long to find its rhythm, but when it does, it hits home—and hard. Watts powerfully depicts the struggles many Americans face trying to overcome life’s inevitable disappointments. But it’s the compassion she feels for her characters’ vulnerability and desires—
      J.J.’s belief that he and Ava can work, Ava’s ache for a family, Sylvia’s wish to be seen and loved—that make the story so relevant and memorable.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Janina Edwards's Southern accent and mature, commanding voice contrast markedly with the passivity of many characters in this novel. The miserable circumstances of one African-American family unfold through Edwards's light drawl and varied tones indicating sarcasm, anxiety, and displaced desires. The "go along to get along" behavior of the older generation, reflected in certain characters like Sylvia, does not bode well for the younger generation, like Sylvia's daughter, Ava, who has subconsciously lived out the phrase regardless. Edwards draws listeners in with inflections that might sting or soothe at different times. Getting to know the people of this small North Carolina town through her narration is worth the time and effort. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      February 1, 2017

      Set in rural North Carolina, Watts's first novel (after the award-winning short story collection We Are Taking Only What We Need) centers on the dynamics of a family struggling with strained relationships and disappointment. Sylvia carries on a phone relationship with Marcus, a prison inmate, to replace the distance between herself and her son, Devon. Ava, Sylvia's daughter, tries desperately to conceive a child and discovers a painful truth about her husband, Henry. JJ Ferguson, an old family friend, returns to town after many years away and causes disruption. Watts shares with us an often neglected segment of America--working and middle-class African Americans living in the current century--and all of the characters strive to find a balance between achieving what they want and settling for what life has dealt them. The many details of the Pinewood community ring true, particularly the contrast between the experiences of the older generation that remembers Jim Crow, and their children. VERDICT This quiet debut novel takes its time, much like the conversations among the various characters, which meander and loop around before reaching their point. The resolution is believable and gratifying without being pat. [See Prepub Alert, 10/24/16.]--Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

      Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Library Journal

      November 15, 2016

      Already a multi-award winner before publishing this first novel, Watts opens with JJ Ferguson returning to Pinewood, NC, to build his dream house and court high school sweetheart Ava. Ava turns out to be married, and her husband's growing cold. Billed as an African American Great Gatsby but with nuances all its own; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

      Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from January 15, 2017
      The Great Gatsby is revived in an accomplished debut novel.Winner of a Pushcart Prize and other awards for her short fiction, Watts (We Are Taking Only What We Need, 2011) spins a compelling tale of obsessive love and dashed dreams set in a struggling North Carolina town. The furniture industry that once served as the major employer has shifted its factories to Asia, leaving former workers feeling unmoored and depressed. Even those who have jobs--Sylvia, who works for a social service agency, and her daughter Ava, a college graduate who has risen to loan officer in a bank--see that they have fallen far short of achieving the American dream. Watts creates tender, sympathetic portraits of her two main characters, women enveloped in grief: Sylvia's for her dead son, Ava's over her inability to conceive the child she desperately wants. Among the town's inhabitants, only JJ Ferguson seems to have succeeded: in the 15 years since he left Pinewood, he has become an enviably rich man. Suddenly, he has returned, and Sylvia wonders if he wants to show off, to prove that "someone like her, someone black, someone once poor, could come back to town and smash it underfoot." But revenge is not why JJ is building a mansion on the hill overlooking the town; he has come back for Ava, whom he has loved since they were children. JJ desires Ava with as much passion as Jay Gatsby felt for Daisy Buchanan. If he won Ava's heart, Sylvia realized, he "thought he could star in his own adventure, be the hero in his own story." That desire infects all of Watts' characters, who wish to star in their own stories, however modest. Sylvia simply wants to be a "known person," to feel "that she had been important to someone." That need compels her to form a relationship with a prisoner rejected by everyone else in his life. Ava's overwhelming need is to be a mother. Watts' gently told story, like Fitzgerald's, is only superficially about money but more acutely about the urgent, inexplicable needs that shape a life.

      COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      February 15, 2017
      Watts, author of a short-story collection, We Are Taking Only What We Need (2011), and winner of a Whiting Award and an Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, explores The Great Gatsby's themes of yearning, loss, hope, and disillusion in her powerhouse debut novel. Set in today's South and delving into African American family life, the story primarily focuses on Sylvia, a middle-aged mother, and Ava, her thirtysomething daughter. They live in the same house and occupy complicated marriages that reveal both the tenuous and tenacious bonds of love. Other life-weary, imperfect characters reflect the economically depressed, near-ghost town, which somehow beckons Gatsbyesque JJ (now Jay), to return with his accumulated wealth and dreams of recapturing the best of his past. Watts' lyrical writing and seamless floating between characters' viewpoints make for a harmonious narrative chorus. This feels like an important, largely missing part of our ongoing American story. Ultimately, Watts offers a human tale of resilience and the universally understood drive to hang on and do whatever it takes to save oneself.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

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